HP and Tower Software, Acquisition

Published Tue, 2008-04-01 17:42 Acquisitions and Mergers

HP and Tower Software have signed a pre-bid agreement for HP to acquire Tower, a document and records management software company based in Canberra, Australia.

The acquisition of Tower will add electronic records management to HP Software’s existing e-discovery and compliance capabilities in information collection and retention. This includes both records management and identification, which have become increasingly important for organization due to rules and regulations such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts.

Under an existing alliance between the companies, Tower TRIM Context has been integrated with the HP Integrated Archive Platform to provide customers with a combined records management and compliance archiving solution.

Tower has more than 22 years of paper and electronic records management experience and serves approximately 1,000 customers with more than 780,000 users in 32 countries.

The board of directors of Tower has unanimously approved the transaction and recommends that Tower shareholders accept HP’s offer in the absence of a higher third-party offer.

Additionally, the three largest shareholders of Tower, Quadrant Private Equity, Brand Hoff and Martin Harwood, have advised Tower that they and their associated interests intend to accept HP’s offer in the absence of a higher third-party offer. Between them, Quadrant Private Equity, Brand Hoff and Martin Harwood have an interest in more than 90 percent of Tower shares.

The acquisition will be conducted by means of an off-market takeover bid for all of the outstanding shares of Tower. The takeover offer is subject to a number of conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the second quarter of calendar year 2008. See Appendix A below for more details.

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